UK households throw away ~100Bn items of plastic packaging/year\[Statista 2023\]. A significant proportion of this is made up of beauty and personal care consumer packaging, presenting an enormous waste management problem for end-of-life plastic packaging. The onus is increasingly on cosmetic and personal care brands and packaging manufacturers to consider end-of-life disposal through EPR schemes and the recent introduction of the Plastics Packaging Tax. There is an urgent need for plastic-alternatives as a packaging solution that avoid PPT, are compostable at end-of-life, and are fully compatible and stable with complex oil/water based cosmetic formulations. FlexSea are developing novel biomaterials using hydrocolloid extracts from red seaweeds as a bio-based feedstock for sustainable packaging solutions. Working with 2M, a key player in the cosmetic and personal care speciality chemical sector, in this collaboration we will advance the properties of this novel biopolymer for use in a cosmetic pot by enhancing the water-oil barrier performance for use with cosmetic formulations. Industrial processing methods (extrusion and injection moulding) will be assessed in collaboration with WMG, drawing on their expertise in advanced manufacturing using sustainable materials to understand processing impact on the biomaterial properties and determine requirements for eventual scale-up production. Project demonstrations will validate the robustness of a biomaterial-based prototype cosmetic pot on a pilot packaging line showcasing suitability for use as a packaging solution. Successful project outcomes will address an urgent need for the cosmetics and personal care sector by providing a completely novel seaweed-derived bioplastic as an exciting biobased sustainable packaging solution.

Brand owners are increasingly under pressure to transition from plastic to paperboard packaging in response to consumer, industry, and regulatory pressures; however, in many paperboard packaging applications (for example, single-use takeaway containers), functional and barrier coatings are required to deliver performance in use. Yet, traditional petroleum-based coatings (typically, polyethylene) consume non-renewable fossil fuel resources, are non-biodegradable (breaking down in the environment to release persistent microplastics), and hard-to-recycle (being both highly contaminated with food waste and grease, as well as difficult to separate from the paperboard), contaminating paperboard recycling streams. Consequently, single-use plastic-coated paperboard takeaway containers are destined for incineration, landfill, or environmental release. Xampla's mission is to replace the world's most polluting plastics for good. Originally spun out from the University of Cambridge in 2018 and now with a team of 35 people based in the Cambridge Science Park Bioinnovation Centre, our patented and game-changing technology harnesses the natural ability of plant proteins to self-assemble. We have created a new class of structured protein materials that deliver performance in use, are bio-/plant-based, biodegradable, manufacturable, and can be solubilised and removed within conventional recycling process steps. We have leveraged private and public funding to deliver swift, successful commercialisation, resulting in innovative product launches in multiple high-value, low-volume applications. Innovate UK Smart funding will formalise a development partnership between Xampla and 2M, global leader in manufacture and distribution of specialty chemicals (Queen's Award for International Trade). Together, we will scale up production of Xampla's biodegradable plant-based resin for high-volume packaging applications. We will start with functional and barrier coatings for paperboard packaging, a market valued by Smithers at USD7.84 billion in 2021 and responsible for the annual production of 3.19 megatonnes of hard-to-recycle, non-biodegradable, petroleum-based coatings. Successful Smart project outcomes will position Xampla, 2M, and UK as world leaders in sustainable packaging.